It must be bunnies!

One of many reasons to love fandom: it gives you over 70 comments debating centuries dead kings, queens and the way they're written, including the trivia that there is a novel in which King John calles his penis 'Raoul', which I am sure you all wanted to know. You can thank me (and angevin2 who supplied me with this information) later. Now the last months have stirred Jossverse nostalgia in me (not just "Buffyverse" since the term would exclude the Los Angeles branch), with the occasional reminder of what I don't miss. (Apparantly first people were upset Mark of capslock and Mark Watches fame doesn't mention Spike often enough in his reviews, and then people were upset other people were upset and posted fandomsecrets about it? See, jesuswasbatman, this is why I'm staying out of the Spike wars.) Anyway, the fandom part I am nostalgic for definitely includes shiny meta, like this essay about Once More With Feelings.

Since I was in shiny Jossverse meta mood, I reread this splendid essay about Wesley and the various personas he goes through on both shows, by versaphile. And then it hit me what Wes and his repeated self recreations reminded me of: Breaking Bad. The last season of which is about to start, so I was thrilled to read frenchani's new essay about Walter White.

In conclusion: meta is fun. And now excuse me while I hum Standing in the Way and wonder for the nth time whether or not the Merlin producers should have found an excuse to let Uther sing.

Thirty Days of Borgias: Day Four

Day 04 ~ Favourite antagonist.

Caterina Sforza, played by Gina McKee. Because the show took the trouble of hiring an actress of this calibre for what was only a cameo appearance the first season, I had an inkling (and hope) that we would get Caterina as one of the main characters in the second, and lo and behold, we did, adding her to the fascinating women of the show. The historical Caterina, aka "The Tigress of Forlì", was one of those Renaissance larger than life figures which you couldn't invent, and while the show here as elsehwere takes liberties, they did capture her courage, ruthlessness, skill in battle and confident sexuality splendidly. The build up to the most famous anecdote told of Caterina was very well done, so that the event itself flowed naturally from the story told instead of feeling like a "illustrated highlights of the Renaissance" type of thing. By now, the Sforzas are the family we know best other than the Borgias themselves, and if they have (had) Giovannni, well, the Borgias have (had) Juan. True, the Sforzas also have Lodovico il Moro on the more psycho side, but then again there's Ascanio whose elegantly distrustful yet respectful of each other's skills relationship with Rodrigo I love, Caterina's son Benito (standing in for all the children of the historical Caterina) who is proud of his mother the badass and dealt bravely with a horrible ordeal... and Caterina herself, who is, as mentioned, larger than life in a rare (for tv, not rl) female version of the "magnificent bastard" principle.

(And when Micheletto calls her a slut we all know he's just jealous because Caterina dragged Cesare to her bed when she wanted him there and kicked him out when she didn't, something Micheletto himself has yet to accomplish, on either score.)

( The rest of the days )